1862  The USS Planter, a steamer and gunship, steals through Confederate lines and is passed to the Union, by a southern slave, Robert Smalls, who later was officially appointed as captain, becoming the first black man to command a United States ship.

1880  In Menlo Park, New Jersey, Thomas Edison performs the first test of his electric railway.

Ben Carlin becomes the first (and only) person to circumnavigate the world by amphibious vehicle, having travelled over 17,000 kilometres (11,000 mi) by sea and 62,000 kilometres (39,000 mi) by land during a ten-year journey.

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1862  The USS Planter, a steamer and gunship, steals through Confederate lines and is passed to the Union, by a southern slave, Robert Smalls, who later was officially appointed as captain, becoming the first black man to command a United States ship.

I also found that one interesting. I've read about him before, but, I keep forgetting.

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1988  Carrollton bus collision: A drunk driver traveling the wrong way on Interstate 71 near Carrollton, Kentucky, United States hits a converted school bus carrying a church youth group. Twenty-seven die in the crash and ensuing fire.

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1963 – Project Mercury: The launch of the final Mercury mission, Mercury-Atlas 9 with astronaut Gordon Cooper on board. He becomes the first American to spend more than a day in space, and the last American to go into space alone.

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Wow - the Puckle gun is fascinating. I heartily recommend the wiki page yo've linked to. Really interesting. I hadn't heard of it before (probably because it didn't make into regular usage in the British forces).

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There's only so much punishment a man can take in pursuit of punani. - Sundae

Based your recommendation, Dana, I've added a link to to the Wiki article about the Puckle gun itself.

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Weaponry from this period is really interesting. There's a link on that wiki page to an older design for a repeating firearm that was much lesslike a 'machine gun' but actually allowed for faster firing. Trouble was it was way expensive to make, and way to sensitive to adverse conditions. basically, the slightest damp on the powdr woud totally bollox the gun.

No good for mainstream army use, because of the way firearms were mass produced and distributed. Basically - for largescale use, the separate coponents were each mass produced and then assembled, but with something like the Kalthoff repeater, the tolerance for any size or shape variation was so tiny, it just woldn't have worked on that scale. For the standard musket there would still have been problems mixing and matching components, but they had greater tolerance for variation, so far fewer rejected components. Also, much more reliable in adverse weather conditions. Even so, there are countless examples of inadequate guns, and rejected components.

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Quote:

There's only so much punishment a man can take in pursuit of punani. - Sundae

Puckle demonstrated two versions of the basic design: one, intended for use against Christian enemies, fired conventional round bullets, while the second variant, designed to be used against the Muslim Turks, fired square bullets which were considered to be more damaging and would, according to its patent, convince the Turks of the "benefits of Christian civilization."

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1974  The Troubles: Thirty-three civilians are killed and 300 injured when the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) detonates four car bombs in Dublin and Monaghan, Republic of Ireland. It is the deadliest attack of the Troubles and the deadliest terrorist attack in the Republic's history. There are allegations that British state forces were involved.

1983  The U.S. Department of Energy declassifies documents showing world's largest mercury pollution event in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (ultimately found to be 4.2 million pounds), in response to the Appalachian Observer's Freedom of Information Act request.

1995  Shawn Nelson steals a tank from a military installation and goes on a rampage in San Diego resulting in a 25-minute police chase. Nelson is killed by an officer after the tank got stuck on a concrete barrier.

2004  The first legal same-sex marriages in the U.S. are performed in the state of Massachusetts.

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1848  MexicanAmerican War: Mexico ratifies the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo thus ending the war and ceding California, Nevada, Utah and parts of four other modern-day U.S. states to the United States for US$15 million.

1943  World War II: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt set Monday, May 1, 1944 as the date for the Normandy landings ("D-Day"). It would later be delayed over a month due to bad weather.

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